The closed comment for Mitch Landrieu articles has become quite prevalent at NOLA.com. There was another closed comment on article yesterday involving a poll conducted on Landrieu's term in office.

Now having said that I must say that NOLA.com has become absolutely awful. Not just a little awful but so awful that I'm watching myself leave their site entirely now for news and towards other media outlets. I have hardly ever read the Advocate but now I'm seeing myself read its website & articles over those at NOLA.com. The same can be said for theLensNola.org and uptownmessenger.com.

I don't know if anyone else feels this way but NOLA has essentially become a entertainment blog that wants to be a message board not a news outlet at all. I've never seen anything like it at all in modern day journalism.

Re "NOLA.COM now censoring all comments for Mitch Landrieu generated stories": Oh! I think that type of blocking may be a different phenomenon, actually. It also happened here (http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/05/after_voucher_ruling_louisiana.html), and that's a story about LaSC striking down the voucher funding mechanism.

Other stories on both topics have received comments in the usual manner, and the website is in terrible operating condition--- it is difficult to choose words that give an accurate idea of how much the site now malfunctions.

There is NO one managing the site changes, and in the past few months they've introduced numerous bugs. As an example, they've broken the old photo submission system while leaving the links up (here's the blank page where you're supposed to post your photos: http://photos.nola.com/photogallery/upload.html). Jim Amoss was on WWL touting the new photos feature, and I very much wished the reporter had asked him to demonstrate its use, because I'm quite sure he couldn't do it. :)

Another example is this: comments that contain links to other pages appear on those pages ALSO, so that when you read them in that second location they're reflexive (referring to the page on which they appear). And that creates a great deal of confusion; Manuel Torres noted it the other day.

So that's why I think blocks on comments for those two stories were unintended. The place where they WILL censor comments every time is a story on the changes at the Symbol Formerly Known As T-P, because I've watched that process as it was occurring. But in those cases they don't block all comments, only the most damaging ones. :)

P.S. Anonymous nailed it here: "NOLA has essentially become a entertainment blog that wants to be a message board." Painful to see it happening.

Latest example of the type of censored thread I was referring to would be the announcement of Robert Mann's hire (nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2013/05/robert_mann_will_debut_sunday.html). Kind of a pity, too, because Jindal shill jeffsadow posted an unintentionally hilarious lament castigating The Symbol for not hiring HIM. That went, Weirox' snappy comeback telling him that's how the free market had evaluated his worth went, and my "I don't think the Varney red meat/clickbait experiment paid off" went. :) ---muspench